Multimedia messaging provides an outstanding business opportunity for mobile network operators. The higher access capacity available with third generation (3G) wireless access have paved the way for richer messages that include various combinations of text, voice, still and animated graphics, photos, video clips, and music. To capitalize on this massive market potential, however, network operators must ensure quality and reliability. Currently, operators are confronted with problems that impede interoperability across different networks and among the wide variety of multimedia formats and wireless devices. Multimedia messages may not be delivered successfully due to incompatible capabilities of an originating terminal and a destination terminal. The incompatibility may relate to message size, encoding methods, or file format. The problem occurs in both peer-to-peer and application-to-peer messaging.
Multimedia content adaptation directly addresses these interoperability issues. Adaptation allows dynamic transcoding of multimedia elements, including multimedia messages. Dynamic transcoding of multimedia elements adapts them to match the characteristics of the receiving devices so that users have universal access to multimedia content and their experience meets their expectations for quality. In an adaptation scheme, a requesting application sends requests to a transcoding device. Multimedia content adaptation ensures interoperability between devices within a network and across networks that follow different standards.
Content elements in a multimedia message may be altered or even removed during adaptation. It is desirable that a recipient, and perhaps a sender, of a modified message be informed of the nature of modification. There is a need, therefore, for a system for generation and delivery of appropriate notifications.